“Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’,” goes Dolly Parton’s anthem. What a way indeed, especially if you are a woman. When it comes to pay, promotions and pensions, women pay a price.
Those with greater educational attainment have greater earning potential, we are always told. Well, when it comes to girls, the numbers don’t add up. Analysis of the Leaving Cert class of 2018 shows that girls outperformed boys in the majority of higher-level subjects, scoring more top grades in 34 out of 40 subjects. Women are more likely to have third-level education too. CSO figures show 8 per cent more women than men are thus qualified. Once at college, girls outperform boys too.
So after all that swotting, scoring the best grades, winning more college places and getting higher qualifications while there, shouldn’t women be getting paid more, or at least, the same as men?
That’s not how it works out. As we approach International Women’s Day this weekend, the sad truth is that, in the Irish jobs market, our boys will get paid more per hour than our girls.
A study by the Higher Education Authority tracked the earnings of tens of thousands of graduates who left college in Ireland between 2010 and 2017. Male graduates earn more, right from the start. Just one year after leaving college, female graduates can expect to earn €14 less each week. After eight years the gap widens to €130 a week.
The HEA study attributes much of the gap to more men opting for higher-earning courses such as ICT and engineering. More women opt for lower-earning areas such as preschool teaching.
Women are indeed disproportionately under-represented in highly paid sectors. Career choices can narrow early, Ibec’s director of employee relations, Maeve McElwee noted last year. “Girls-only schools sometimes fail to offer ‘gendered’ subjects such as mechanical drawing, while all-boys schools may not offer home economics; either may have timetables drawn up which pitch these subjects against each other.”
She says significant interventions are required in the education system to address subject availability, subject and career choice, and gender stereotyping and role modelling.
Mind the gap
Occupational segregation exacerbates the gender pay gap but it’s not the sole cause of it, studies show. Even after adjusting for course choices and comparing men and women completing the same courses, there is still a gap in earnings of about 3 per cent, the HEA graduate study finds.
Looking at the wider workforce, the picture is no brighter. The CSO defines the gender pay gap as the difference between male and female gross hourly earnings as a percentage of average male gross hourly earnings. The CSO’s Elaine O’Mahoney told the Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality that, in Ireland, this gap had increased. In 2015 the overall gap in pay stood at 13.9 per cent; it had risen to 14.4 per cent in 2017.
If you have a daughter who wants to be a software developer or programmer, an accountant, doctor, teacher, nurse or midwife, her male colleagues will almost certainly earn more. In the case of doctors it’s about €30,000 more. In fact, the median earned income for men is higher across nearly all occupations, according to CSO figures.
Across all levels of education, men earn more than women. From those with no education to those with degrees, master’s degrees and PhDs, women earn thousands less.
Childcare costs pose a significant barrier to employment for women, especially lone parents
Everyone knows children are expensive, but they bring a disproportionate cost for mothers. They can break your heart for sure, but for some women, being a mother can break your career.
Of major European countries, Ireland has one of the lowest female employment rates. Between the typical childbearing years of 29-39, there is a permanent drop-off in the female participation rate, according to a report by Ibec on gender pay-gap reporting. Some mothers want to work in the home. Others would like to work, or work more outside the home, but are constrained by family responsibilities, according to the report.
Unpaid work
In all countries, women do more unpaid work (care time and housework) than men. In Ireland the gap between men and women, at 16 hours, is among the highest in Europe. Unpaid work makes women less available for labour market participation, widening the gender pay gap and further.
Low State support for childcare results in high individual unpaid work time, says Dr Helen Russell of the ESRI, co-author of a report on the matter for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Ireland has the fourth-highest unmet need for formal childcare across 11 countries.
Furthermore, research by the ESRI and Pobal found that mothers who face high childcare costs work fewer hours. Mothers with higher childcare costs at age three tended to work fewer hours when their child was aged five.
Childcare costs pose a significant barrier to employment for women, especially lone parents. “Our findings show that, for example, 10 per cent higher childcare costs were associated with 30 minutes less paid work by mothers per week,” says Russell.
The resultant career gaps for caring can result in a “motherhood penalty”, says Ibec. This is due to “interrupted employment, detachment from the labour market and possible deterioration of skills and networks. It can also lead to lost opportunities for training, promotion and salary increments [that] would be gained while employed.”
Without greater equality in terms of unpaid work, greater gender equality in the labour market is unlikely to be achieved. Parental leave entitles both parents to take 22 weeks unpaid leave from work to look after their children. From September this will increase to 26 weeks. However, women are one-third more likely to take it than men.
Gaps in earnings ripple all the way to retirement, meaning women ultimately experience a pension gap, too
It’s all chicken and egg from there: the gender pay gap may mean the man, as the bigger bread winner, is more likely to continue working, while the woman’s earning potential is further depressed by taking leave.
It’s not just motherhood that brings a penalty, according to ESRI research. Caring is also linked to involuntary exits of older workers from employment, with women being five times more likely than men to exit due to family care.
Civil service
With all that extra burden of upaid work, it’s not surprising the average workplace makes this no country for many women to rise to the top.
Russell of the ESRI points to a 2017 study of gender in senior civil service positions in Ireland, commissioned as part of the civil service renewal programme. While women make up 63 per cent of civil servants, only 21 per cent of them make it to the top.
Of the same education, length of service and age, men are twice as likely to occupy positions of principal officer and above, the report found. Men’s advancement to senior grades happens 1½ to three years faster than that of women who start at the same grade.
The study cites barriers to promotion for women as a lack of flexible working arrangements in senior roles; a long-hours work culture that ignores care constraints; lack of supports in the transition to senior roles; and gender inequalities in access to experiences that enhance promotion opportunities.
Gaps in earnings ripple all the way to retirement, meaning women ultimately experience a pension gap, too. ESRI research funded by the Pensions Council shows the average pension income of a retired woman is 35 per cent lower than that of retired man. Based on data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Tilda), the analysis finds the average total weekly pension income in 2010 was €280 for women and €433 for men.
The gap is due to differences in income from private and occupational pensions – 55 per cent of retired men receive a private or occupational pension, compared with only 28 per cent of women.
If you are a woman who worked last year, you effectively did it for free from November, says WorkEqual
"Women are less likely to work for a start, particularly this cohort of women who were retired by 2010. But even if they were working, they don't have as long a career, they were getting paid less, or were in occupations where they were getting less pay, and they also had much more time out of the workforce," says Dr Anne Nolan, an author of the study.
"Practically every man has over 30 years' work experience, whereas that was [the case for] only one-third of the women in the group. Women just didn't have the opportunity to get the entitlement to private and occupational pensions that a man would." Eurostat research shows that in 2016, Ireland's gender gap in pensions for those aged 65-79 stood at 26 per cent. In Denmark it was 7.7 per cent.
If you are a woman who worked last year, you effectively did it for free from November, says WorkEqual, a campaign for workplace gender equality by the charity Dress for Success Dublin. "Lack of affordable childcare, gender stereotyping, inflexible work options and poor take-up of parental leave are all feeding into the persistent inequalities between women and men," says founder Sonya Lennon.
So come November, you might just decide to stay home and put your feet up – that’s after you’ve done the shop, put on a wash, supervised homework, emptied the dishwasher and made dinner.
